In Paradise of the Pacific, Susanna Moore, the award-winning author of In the Cut and The Life of Objects, pieces together the elusive, dramatic story of Hawai'i - a place of kings and queens, gods and goddesses, missionaries and explorers - a not-so-distant time of abrupt transition, in which an isolated pagan world of human sacrifice and strict taboo, without a currency or a written language, was confronted with the equally ritualised world of capitalism, Western education, and Christian values.